| Comment Number: | OL-10506636 |
| Received: | 3/12/2005 2:50:06 PM |
| Subject: | Notice of Proposed Rulemaking, Request for Comment |
| Title: | National Security Personnel System |
| CFR Citation: | 5 CFR Chapter XCIX and Part 9901 |
| No Attachments |
Comments:
The proposal for the National Security Personnel System (NSPS) was published in the Federal Register (Vol. 70, No. 29 pages 7551-7603) on February 14, 2005. My main concern with the NSPS is that it does not seem to have adequate checks and balances for the Secretary of the Department of the Defense (hereafter to be referred to as the Secretary). For example, under the new system DoD employees will no longer be able to bring their disputes with management before the Federal Labor Relations Authority but must use the National Security Labor Relations Board (see the Federal Register pages 7568-7573 and 7594-7603). The problem with the NSLRB is that all of the members are appointed by the Secretary. How can we expect the members to be fair to labor when they are appointed by the DoD's top manager? If the DoD really needs its own labor relations board, I propose that the members of this board be appointed by the Director of OPM and not the Secretary. The Secretary also has too much authority over the Mandatory Removal Offenses (MRO) list ( see pages 7564,7565,7591). Actually, a MRO list is not a bad idea; but the information given about this list in the Federal Register is disturbingly sketchy. Nevertheless, at some point a list of offenses mysteriously -- the Federal Register does not tell us how -- appears. If a DoD employee commits one of these offenses he or she automatically loses his or her job. The Secretary has the sole discretion over this list. However, it is conceivable to have a new Secretary every four years. Will the list change with each new Secretary? Can a Secretary change the list whenever he or she feels like it? Just how will this list and any changes to this list be communicated to DoD employees? Of course, if there are extenuating circumstances in a particlular case the Secretary "has the sole, exclusive and unreviewable discretion to mitigate the removal penalty on his or her own initiative."(page 7591). I think it is too bad that apparently not even the President of the United States can mitigate the removal penalty. Finally, all taxpayers should be interested in the statement that the estimated cost of implementing the new system will be $158 million between now and Fiscal Year 2008 (page 7574). Will the nation reap benefits worth such an investment? It is really impossible to answer that question. It is impossible to answer it because the Federal Register did not give an explaination of why the department needs a new personnel system but rather explained why the department can create a new personnel system. In addition, there was no logical explaination of how the proposed system will fix what is wrong with the current system. Furthermore, there was no proposed mechanism for evaluating the NSPS. In other words, ten years from now nobody will know if the NSPS did everything it was supposed to or not. Nobody will know except maybe the Secretary.